CLARENCE, N.Y. -- Families of the victims who died aboard Continental Connection Flight 3407 when it crashed in Buffalo, N.Y., in February still hope to recover thousands of items belonging to their loved ones that escaped the flames.

Fourteen of the 49 victims had ties to New Jersey. One person died on the ground.

2008 Star-Ledger file photoJazz guitarist Coleman Mellett, who lived in East Brunswick, was one of the victims who died aboard the Continental flight that crashed in Buffalo, N.Y., six months ago.

Jennifer West hopes she'll see her husband, Ernie's, wedding band again. A tattered slice of his black leather wallet made it home, along with the four, somehow perfectly intact photos of their toddler daughter, Summer Tyme, he'd tucked inside.

Employees of a disaster recovery company recently delivered some victims' personal effects. But Ernie's gold-trimmed platinum ring and other items -- his watch, the BlackBerry his wife called endlessly the night of the crash -- have yet to make it home.

Maybe the ring will turn up in the next phase of this slow and emotional recovery process, when Jennifer West and others still grieving their losses are again asked to look through a computerized catalog and claim what is left from that night.

Roughly 30,000 items yet to be matched with victims are expected to be ready for viewing within the next two months. They are likely a jumble of passengers' belongings and household items from the Clarence Center home flattened in the crash.

Two of musician Chuck Mangione's band members -- Coleman Mellett of East Brunswick and Gerry Niewood of Glen Ridge -- also were among the victims, as were 9/11 widow Beverly Eckert, a former New Jersey resident.

The disaster recovery company, BMS-Global, listed more easily identifiable items in June. They are making their way home now, each cleaned and wrapped in white tissue, as much to protect the hearts of those receiving them as the items themselves.

While they wait for the belongings, many families are in the public eye, prodding congressional leaders for air-safety changes and honoring the victims at public memorials. Bringing what they can of their loved ones home has been more private, the families clinging to bits and pieces of lives lost, long after the funerals.

In May, members sat through a National Transportation Safety Board hearing that exposed pilot fatigue and inadequate training as possible causes of the crash. They have met with transportation officials and lawmakers, pushing for a new database of pilot training records and seeking more research on pilot fatigue.

The families believe the crash was preventable, the result of Colgan Air's pilots flying in icy conditions that they may not have been equipped to handle. Toward the end of its flight from Newark, the twin-engine turboprop stalled, then plunged from the sky five miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport.